How Many Blueberry Buns Do You Need Per Person?

The question arrives most weeks, usually by message, usually the day before somebody wants them. Twelve people are coming. How many boxes. The answer depends less on the guests than on what else is on the table, and on whether the buns are the meal or the thing after the meal.

Our Blueberry Streusel Buns come four to a box at £36, with 24 hours' notice. They are soft enriched buns filled with blueberries under a buttery streusel crust. They are the Polish jagodzianka in shape and method, though the classic is built on the small sharp forest bilberry and ours are made with cultivated blueberries, which are larger, sweeter and milder, and we would rather say so than borrow the name and hope nobody notices. The full history of the bun, the berry and the crumb topping is set out in what jagodzianki are. What follows is arithmetic.

Start with the size of the bun, not the size of the crowd

These are not miniature pastries. One bun is a breakfast for most adults, particularly with coffee. That single fact decides almost everything else. The common mistake in party planning across London is to price pastries per head as though they were canapés and then find three quarters of a tray going home in napkins.

The general rule we give people asking how many pastries per person to order is this. If the pastry is the meal, count one and a quarter per adult. If the pastry follows a meal, or sits beside a cake, count one half. If there are three or four different sweet things on the table, count one third of each item per person and the total will land close to two pieces each, which is what most people actually eat at a morning gathering.

Children under about ten eat half a bun and leave the rest, so count them in pairs. Teenagers count as two adults. That is not a joke about appetite, it is what the orders tell us.

Blueberry Streusel Buns (Jagodzianki)Jagodzianki, Polish blueberry buns, four to a box. Soft enriched dough, blueberry filling, buttery streusel.£42Order this

Breakfast for four, and breakfast for eight

Four adults, no cake, coffee and nothing else sweet: one box, and someone will want a second half. Two boxes for four is generous rather than absurd if you want leftovers, and blueberry buns keep well for a day in a sealed tin and warm back to life in a low oven.

Eight adults at a family breakfast: two boxes gets everyone one bun. Three boxes covers seconds, the person who arrives late and the child who eats two. If there are also eggs, bread and fruit on the table, stay at two boxes and add a loaf from the Wednesday round instead.

For a working breakfast where people stand up, hold a cup and leave within the hour, halve it. Ten colleagues will get through five or six buns. Order two boxes and put out a bowl of something else.

A birthday where there is also a cake

This is where over ordering happens. An 18 cm cake such as the honey cake at £68 cuts into twelve to fourteen polite slices, or ten generous ones. If the cake is the centrepiece, buns are a side act and half a bun per person is the honest figure. Twelve guests with a cake need one box, cut into halves, perhaps two boxes if the party runs from eleven in the morning to the middle of the afternoon.

For anything above about twenty five people the cake itself needs to change shape rather than the bun count, and large format for events lives at big cakes. Keep the buns as the morning layer of a long party and the cake as the afternoon one. Bring the buns out first, whole, on a board. Cut nothing until people ask.

Remember the notice periods differ: buns need 24 hours, cakes need 48. Order both at once and work backwards from the cake.

Coffee mornings, christenings and the catering quantities that actually work

A coffee morning of twenty people, running two hours, with tea and coffee and two or three sweet things: three boxes of buns, twelve pieces, cut in half on the plate. Add a cookies selection at £18 and a box of Madagascan vanilla choux at £16 and the table looks full without anything being wasted.

A christening or a naming lunch, where there is food before and people sit down: buns are the least eaten item on any dessert table because they are filling. Count one third per person. Twenty four guests, two boxes, halved, and then more cake.

For an office, the rule is the number of people who will actually walk to the table, which is rarely the number on the invitation. Take two thirds of the headcount and round to the nearest box of four. Thirty in the office, twenty at the table, five boxes covers it with halves left over for the afternoon.

What goes home in a napkin is real and worth planning for. Somewhere between one in six and one in eight guests will pocket a bun for later if they are whole and wrapped, and almost nobody takes half a bun. If you want people to leave with something, order a spare box and keep it in its box.

Picnics, where buns travel better than almost anything

A streusel topped bun survives a rucksack better than a cream filled pastry and does not need a fork, a plate or refrigeration for a few hours. For a picnic, count one whole bun per adult and add a box for the walk home. Six adults, two boxes. Ten adults, three boxes.

Savoury alongside works better than more sweet. Six potato and onion pirozhki at £22 or six mushroom pirozhki at £27 cover the people who want lunch before pudding, and they eat cold.

For the people who do not want fruit

There is one at every table. Fruit in a hot bun is not to everyone's taste, and a blueberry filling stains fingers and shirts, which some people mind.

The simplest substitutions, all from the full collection:

• Airy Cinnamon Buns at £32, lighter than a roll, for people who want spice rather than fruit.
• Cinnamon Rolls, six at £44, with cream cheese frosting, when the crowd skews younger.
• Poppy Seed Buns, four at £30, which is the other classic enriched bun of the same tradition and divides a table neatly in two.
• Moscow Plyushka at £32, twisted and sugar glazed, no filling at all.

For a mixed group of twelve at a morning event, two boxes of blueberry buns and one box of cinnamon buns is the split that comes back emptiest.

Cinnamon Rolls - 6 Pieces£48Poppy Seed Buns - 4 Pieces£30

When to round up

Round up when the event runs longer than two hours, when children are counted in the headcount as single portions, when there is no cake, or when the buns are the only thing being served. Round down when there is a cake, when lunch comes first, or when three or more sweet items are on the table.

If you are still unsure, order in the ratio of one box per four adults at a breakfast and one box per eight at anything with a cake, then add a single spare box. Nobody has ever complained about the spare box.

Orders go to info@mikebakes.uk or +44 7922 122149, 24 hours ahead for buns, 48 for cakes, with the date you want them for.